$8.99City Highlights
Delft Audio Walking Tours
Self-guided, narrated walks through Delft. Buy a tour once, download it, and hear the story at each stop while you walk at your own pace.
Tours from $7.99
Friends walk free. One purchase covers everyone on your walk. Start the tour, invite your friends to join, and it plays on every phone in your group.
5.0 on Google Play
Delft audio tours
Each tour is a mapped route with narration at every stop. Buy it once and it is yours to keep, no subscription.
$8.99City Highlights
$7.99City HighlightsWhat to expect on a Delft audio walking tour
A Delft audio walk moves between two routes through the same small canal town, one tracing a medieval gate, a university garden and a seventeenth century pottery, the other crossing the old center from a working windmill to the royal tombs beneath the Nieuwe Kerk.
The Delft Gates & Delftware Walk starts beside the Oostpoort, the medieval East Gate with its twin spires and white drawbridge, then cuts south through the leafy campus of TU Delft, past the walled Botanic Garden and the grass roofed university library shaped like a sloping lawn. From there it reaches Royal Delft, the last of the town's seventeenth century potteries still painting blue and white earthenware by hand, before finishing on the harbor basin where Johannes Vermeer painted his famous View of Delft. It's 3 kilometers and about 41 minutes of flat walking.
The Delft Old Town Walk begins at Windmill De Roos on the western edge of the center, a working grain mill with a wooden gallery wrapped around its tower, then follows the Oude Delft canal to the Prinsenhof, the former convent where William of Orange was assassinated in 1584. A few minutes on, the leaning brick tower of the Oude Kerk, nicknamed Oude Jan, marks the resting place of both Vermeer and the microscope pioneer Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.
From there the Old Town Walk passes the Vermeer Centrum on the site of the old painters' guild hall and opens onto the Markt, where the Nieuwe Kerk's tower rises over the tomb of William of Orange and the burial vault of the House of Orange. The route finishes by way of the leafy Beestenmarkt square, the old Armamentarium arsenal and Delft Station, 2.4 kilometers and about 33 minutes in all.
Where to walk in Delft
A few of the stops you will pass, and why they are worth slowing down for.
Oostpoort
Two slim towers with pointed spires rise over a white wooden drawbridge at the Oostpoort, the last of Delft's medieval town gates still standing. In the Middle Ages the town was ringed by walls and a moat, and traders paid their tolls here while watchmen checked everyone coming in. The oldest parts go back to around 1400, with the spires added about a century later. Delft once had a whole circuit of these gates, but as the town outgrew its walls in the nineteenth century they were torn down one by one, leaving only this pair behind. The canal in front follows the line of the old moat, and on a still day the towers reflect in the water almost perfectly.
Beestenmarkt
The Beestenmarkt is a broad square under tall old trees, its edges lined with gabled houses and, these days, with cafe terraces spilling across most of the open space. The name means the beast market, since for centuries this was where animals were driven in from the surrounding farmland and traded in the open air. Today the only animals left are the dogs dozing under the tables, and the square has become one of the best loved spots in town to sit outside, especially on a warm evening when students and locals fill the terraces. It's a good place to rest your feet partway through either walk.
The Markt and Town Hall
This is the ornate front of Delft's City Hall, a Renaissance building wrapped around a much older stone tower that once held the town prison, facing the Nieuwe Kerk across the long, open Markt square. Gilded details and carved coats of arms pick out the facade, a statement of civic pride from a town that grew rich on trade and craft. The square is the beating heart of Delft, lined with cafes and market stalls and busy with cyclists cutting across on their way somewhere else. Look down the full length of the Markt toward the New Church's towering spire, the second tallest in the Netherlands.
Koornmarkt Canal
The Koornmarkt is one of Delft's loveliest canals, named for the grain once traded along its banks, lined with trees, gabled merchants' houses and front steps that come almost down to the waterline. Look closely and you'll notice many buildings lean slightly forward, with a beam and hook at the top of the gable once used to haul goods straight up to the attic, since the stairs inside were far too narrow. The still water throws back a near perfect reflection of the facades on a calm day. There are no railings along most of Delft's canals, so it's worth watching your footing here, especially with children.
A Delft Canal Crossing
A white painted bridge carries cyclists and pedestrians over a quiet canal thick with algae and water plants, cafe umbrellas and flower boxes crowding the bank on one side. Scenes like this one turn up again and again across Delft, since the town is built on a grid of canals that once moved goods between the gates, the market and the river, and today mostly just moves bikes. Parked bicycles line the railings on both sides, a reminder that this is a cycling town before it is anything else. Cross slowly and look both ways, since every bridge in Delft offers its own version of this same gentle, green hued view.
Get the Audio Tour in 3 Simple Steps
All in the free Walk With Me app, and the first stops of every tour are free to try.
Tap the Gold Headphones and Pick a Tour
01
Walk It Solo or Invite Someone
02
Press Play and Walk
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Handcrafted for Your Time in the City
These tours aren't a checklist of sights. They're made to be walked slowly, headphones on, eyes on the city.
Meditative and Immersive
Each story is told where it happened. The app chimes when you reach a stop, one tap starts the story, and the stretch between stops is yours to take in at your own pace.
Handcrafted With Care
We choose every route and every stop ourselves and shape each story with care, so the time you have in the city goes to the places most worth seeing.
Better With Someone
Every walk is better with someone beside you, so if you can bring a friend, we really hope you do. That's why one purchase covers everyone you invite: they join your tour free.